Recently, there have been proposed robotic devices each capable of autonomously deciding its own behavior correspondingly to its surrounding environment and internal state. Such robots include for example ones of a type which can have a pseudo-emotion and -instinct (will be referred to as “emotion” and “instinct” hereunder) which are changed according to its environment and internal state, and behave correspondingly to such changes in emotion and instinct, that is, can reflect changes of its emotion and instinct in its action, and also ones of a type which can behave in a manner corresponding to each of its growing steps.
Of these types of recent robots, the motion, instinct and growth vary adaptively to their environment and internal state. For example, different manners of handling will result in different internal states such as emotion, respectively, in the robot. Namely, the same robot showing a behavior when handled by a user will behave in a different manner when handled by another user.
Many robotic devices are commercially available. Usually, robotic devices on the market are designed under their respective predetermined specifications and cannot be of any other than the predetermined specification. Some robots have recently become available which are designed according to customer-selected specifications, respectively; practically, however, not many kinds of specifications are prepared for a single model. The user will lose interest in playing with the robot which cannot be of another specification.
Thus, if the specification of a robotic device can be changed to a desired one after the purchase of the device, the user can enjoy playing with his or her robotic device as if it were of another version. Such a change in specification of a robotic device after purchased, that is possible for the user, can be implemented through replacement of an existing component/device/accessory of the robot with a user-defined one for example.
Thus, in case an existing component/device/accessory of the robotic device can be replaced with any desired adaptive component, if the user can easily search for an adaptive component/device/accessory from many components/devices/accessories of the robot, he will be able to simply change the specification of his robot. This will also lead to the advantage or profit of the manufacturer or distributor of the robot. In such a case, adding a user's demand, quality and information on robotic devices the user has so far used to information used to search for the component/device/accessory will make it possible to accurately search for the component/device/accessory in consideration.
If such components/devices/accessories can be supplied from the manufacturer or distributor of the robotic device as well as from a third party (for example, a third party which is accessible on the information communication network), a wider variety of robotic device components/devices/accessories will be available from them, and thus the user can have a wider choice of components/devices/accessories for his robotic device.
Further, by collecting information such as demand from a user of a robotic device and information about components/devices/accessories available from a third party and analyzing the correlation between the information, it is possible to smoothly supply robotic device components/devices/accessories from the manufacturer or distributor to the user.